USASpending Scraper - Federal Contracts, Grants & Awards Data

Pull the full firehose of US federal spending — contracts, grants, loans and direct payments — straight from the official USASpending.gov API. This federal awards scraper returns clean, flat records of who is being paid by the US government, for what, when and where, with no login, no API key and no scraping fragility.

Built for GovCon business development, federal contractor lead generation, budget analytics and watchdog journalism. A single run can return hundreds of thousands of records, and because it reads the official Treasury open data API the data is authoritative and won't break when usaspending.gov restyles its site.

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What you get

One flat dataset record per federal award. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel or XML, or pull through the Apify API:

• awardId — federal award identifier (PIID, FAIN or URI)
• recipientName — award recipient (company, university, agency, individual)
• awardAmount — total obligated amount in USD
• totalOutlays — outlays paid out so far in USD
• awardType — contract, grant, loan, direct payment or other
• description — award description / purpose
• startDate / endDate — period of performance dates
• awardingAgency / awardingSubAgency — issuing department and bureau
• placeOfPerformanceState / placeOfPerformanceCountry — where the work is performed
• url — direct link to the award detail page on USASpending.gov
• scrapedAt — ISO-8601 scrape timestamp

Coverage spans every award type: federal contracts (IDIQ, BPA, task / delivery orders), grants (competitive, formula, block), loans & loan guarantees (SBA, USDA, DOE, HUD, FHA), direct payments (Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits, ag subsidies) and other financial assistance.

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Use cases

• Government contractor research (GovCon BD) — see exactly who is winning federal contracts, with which agency, for how much; build account plans for the top awardees in your vertical.
• Federal budget analytics — track agency-level spending trends quarter over quarter and roll up by sub-agency or place of performance.
• Grant tracking — monitor new grants in your domain (cybersecurity, biotech, climate, AI, defense) the day they are announced.
• B2B sales & lead generation — federal awardees are pre-qualified prospects for cloud, staffing, GovTech, fintech and compliance vendors.
• Watchdog & investigative journalism — surface unusual awards, large outlays and contractor concentration at scale.

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How to use

1. Pick award types — any combination of contracts, grants, direct-payments, loans, other.
2. Set a date range and optional keyword — bound the award action date and filter on recipient / description / agency text.
3. Run & export — the actor paginates the whole USASpending search API for you; download as CSV, JSON, Excel or XML, or schedule a rolling window for an always-fresh feed.

Example — every cybersecurity contract + grant in 2025

{
  "awardTypes": ["contracts", "grants"],
  "startDate": "2025-01-01",
  "endDate": "2025-12-31",
  "keyword": "cybersecurity",
  "maxAwards": 0
}

Input fields

Field	Required	Description
awardTypes	Yes	contracts, grants, direct-payments, loans, other.
startDate	No	Earliest award action date (YYYY-MM-DD). Empty = last 12 months.
endDate	No	Latest award action date. Empty = today.
keyword	No	Free-text filter on recipient / description / agency.
maxAwards	No	Cap on total awards saved. 0 = all matching (can be hundreds of thousands).

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FAQ

Do I need an API key or login?

No. The USASpending.gov API is public and unauthenticated — no API key, no login, no proxy required.

How much data can I get in one run?

The actor is fully paginated and can return hundreds of thousands of records per run. Set maxAwards = 0 for everything matching your filters, or cap it for a faster sample.

How does this compare to SAM.gov?

SAM.gov shows active solicitations and opportunities (what's available to bid on). USASpending shows what has already been awarded and to whom. They're complementary — this actor handles the awarded side at full historical scale.

What output formats are supported?

Every run produces a structured dataset you can export to JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML, or pull through the Apify API.

Is this a USASpending.gov API alternative?

Yes. It is an unofficial wrapper around the public USASpending.gov API, giving you a no-code USASpending data extraction tool that handles pagination and flattens awards into ready-to-use records.

How do I export USASpending.gov data to CSV or JSON?

Run the actor with your award types and date range, then download the dataset as CSV, JSON, Excel or XML. It's the simplest way to bulk export federal spending data without writing API code.

Can I scrape federal awards without an API key or login?

Yes. The USASpending.gov API is public and unauthenticated, so you can scrape federal contracts and grants without any API key, login or proxy.

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Related scrapers

• UK Companies House Bulk Scraper — UK corporate registry data.
• SEC EDGAR Form D Scraper — private placements & startup fundraising disclosures.
• GLEIF LEI Scraper — global Legal Entity Identifier data.
• Public Tenders Scraper — live EU / UK / US tender opportunities (the bid side of federal spending).

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Changelog

2026-06-15

• Reliability pass: re-verified end-to-end on live data with real-world inputs. Routine maintenance build.

2026-06-07

• Docs: added coverage for USASpending.gov API alternative usage, exporting federal awards data to CSV/JSON, and scraping federal contracts & grants without an API key.

2026-06-05

• 🛡️ Reliability fix: results are no longer dropped by strict output validation — runs now complete cleanly even at high volume (thousands of results).
• ⚡ Stability & performance hardening; fresh rebuild.

2026-06-04

• Verified live & refreshed build — reliability/maintenance pass.